Category Archives: World News

Chief of top Canadian grocery chain gets $1.2m raise amid criticism over prices

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Raise brings Galen Weston of Loblaw Companies’ pay to $11.79m last year amid outcry for raising prices during record inflation

The billionaire head of Canada’s largest grocery chain has been given a C$1.2m (US$890,000) raise, in a move likely to prompt controversy as grocery executives have faced sharp criticism for raising their prices amid record inflation.

The raise for Galen Weston, chairman and president of grocer Loblaw Companies, brought his total pay last year to C$11.79m. Details of the deal were first reported by the Globe and Mail.

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Young migrants take over Paris building in protest at treatment

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Young people had been sleeping rough across city after being rejected as minors by French authorities

More than 180 homeless young migrants have taken over a disused nursery school building in the west of Paris to protest against the inhumane treatment of unaccompanied minors arriving in France from Africa.

Backed by three French charities, the young people who had been sleeping rough across Paris for months arrived overnight at the old school building, which has no running water or electricity, and slept under blankets.

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Zelenskiy welcomed with military honours on visit to Poland

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Trip is first time Ukrainian president and first lady have travelled abroad together since Russia invaded

Military honours, tributes and praise welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena Zelenska, to Poland in a rare wartime foray out of Ukraine for the country’s president.

While Zelenskiy has also travelled to the US, Britain, France and Belgium, the trip to Poland stood out because it was announced in advance and undertaken without the secrecy of past foreign trips.

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Axe attack at Brazilian pre-school leaves four children dead and five injured

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President Lula deplores ‘act of hate and cowardice’ as police arrest 25-year-old man after killings in southern state of Santa Catarina

Four children have been killed and at least five others injured after a 25-year-old man armed with a small axe attacked a pre-school in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

A man with a hatchet jumped over a wall and invaded a daycare center on Wednesday in Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least five others, authorities said.

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Paris prosecutors open criminal inquiry into air quality on Métro

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Operator investigated for possible trickery and causing involuntary injuries over pollution levels within network

Prosecutors in Paris have opened a criminal investigation into allegations that pollution in the capital’s Métro system is putting travellers’ lives at risk.

The operator of the Métro, the RATP, is being investigated for possible trickery and causing involuntary injuries after it was claimed it had deliberately underreported pollution levels and failed to inform passengers about the dangers.

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Rival protests in Los Angeles as Taiwan’s president arrives for visit

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Tsai Ing-wen to meet the US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, which China has called a ‘provocation’

Pro- and anti-Taiwan protesters gathered at Los Angeles airport for the arrival of Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, before a meeting scheduled for Wednesday with the US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

Protesters also crowded outside Tsai’s LA hotel on Tuesday evening, banging drums, chanting and holding Taiwanese flags and photos of the president, who shook hands with supporters as she entered. A smaller, pro-Beijing group gathered nearby on the pavement, separated by a police line, at times chanting “One China”.

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Jacinda Ardern says leaders can be ‘sensitive and kind’ in farewell speech

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Former New Zealand PM calls for politics to be opened up for all in emotional address to parliament

“You can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve. You can be a mother, or not, an ex-Mormon, or not, a nerd, a crier, a hugger – you can be all of these things, and not only can you be here – you can lead.”

Jacinda Ardern has left New Zealand’s parliament with a highly personal, often emotional speech, calling for an opening up of politics to those who may not see themselves as typical leaders.

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Five arrested over human sacrifice at Indian temple

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Arrests follow discovery four years ago of woman’s headless body at Hindu temple in Guwahati

Indian police have arrested five men accused of conducting a human sacrifice, nearly four years after the discovery of a woman’s headless body at a Hindu temple left officers baffled.

Shanti Shaw, 64, was killed and decapitated with a machete in 2019 after visiting the temple in Guwahati, a city in India’s remote north-east.

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Israeli hospitals scramble to comply with ‘chametz law’ for Passover

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New law bans people from taking leavened food made from grain into medical centres during Jewish holiday

Passover celebrations in Israel this year are once again being overshadowed by a row over the consumption of leavened food such as bread in public buildings, in a symbolic fight about the role of religion in the state.

Last week, the Knesset passed the “chametz law”, which bans people from taking leavened food made from grain into hospitals during Passover. The law, sponsored by an ultra-Orthodox party, is in accordance with traditional Jewish teachings stipulating that observant Jews cannot eat chametz or have it in their homes during the week-long holiday.

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Russia-Ukraine war: anyone supporting Moscow in conflict is an ‘accomplice’, Macron says during China visit – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more of our Russia-Ukraine war coverage here

You may have noticed on Monday that we are testing a new feature across some of the Guardian’s live blogs, including the Ukraine live blog, which allows you to contact us directly. This is for people who want to message the live blogger directly, and they are not public comments.

If you have something you’ve seen you think we’ve missed, or you have questions or comments about the war or our coverage, or you have spotted one of my regular typos, please do drop me a line.

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Palestinians arrested and injured in Israeli raid on al-Aqsa mosque

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Police raid triggers West Bank clashes, cross-border strikes in Gaza Strip and fears of escalation

At least 14 Palestinians have been injured and hundreds arrested in an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, triggering clashes in the West Bank, cross-border strikes in the Gaza Strip and fears of wider escalation over the holiday period.

The violence in the early hours of Wednesday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday – comes after a year of spiralling bloodshed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also carries echoes of 2021, when clashes at Jerusalem’s holiest site helped start an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza.

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Water ban in drought-stricken Tunisia adds to growing crisis

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Risk of unrest rises amid fourth dry year, poor grain harvest, weak economy and likely food subsidy cuts

Tunisia has introduced water rationing as the country suffers its fourth year of severe drought.

The state water distribution company, Sonede, has already begun cutting mains water supplies every night between 9pm and 4am. The agriculture ministry has now banned the use of water for irrigation, watering green spaces and other public areas, and for washing cars.

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Democrats bid to use censorship law against DeSantis and ban his book

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Opponents say memoir The Courage to be Free, published in February, violates law governor signed last year

Democrats in Florida are attempting to use a state law that censors books in public schools against the governor who signed it, Ron DeSantis, by asking schools to review or ban the Republican governor’s own book, The Courage to be Free.

“The very trap he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state house, told the Daily Beast.

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Trump addresses indictment in brief – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. You can read our full story on Trump’s arraignment here.

After listing off a number of grievances, attacking those involved in the multiple investigations and criminal cases against him, and rambling a number of of-repeated falsehoods about the 2020 elections, he walked off stage.

The speech was in many ways a standard performance, but shorter.

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Macron arrives in China hoping to talk Xi into changing stance on Ukraine

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French leader sees Beijing as possible ‘gamechanger’ and will also discuss European trade on three-day visit

Emmanuel Macron has arrived in China for a three-day state visit during which he hopes to dissuade Xi Jinping from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while also developing European trade ties with Beijing.

Shortly after arriving in the Chinese capital, Macron said he wanted to push back against the idea that there was an “inescapable spiral of mounting tensions” between China and the west.

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Twitter accused of censorship in India as it blocks Modi critics

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Canadian politician, poet, an India MP and journalists are among 120 accounts that have been withheld

Twitter has been accused of bowing to government pressure in India by blocking scores of prominent journalists, politicians and activists from its platform in recent weeks.

The Indian government issued notices to Twitter to remove people in the aftermath of an internet shutdown in Punjab during the search for a fugitive Sikh separatist leader.

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UK blocks UN webcast featuring Russia children’s commissioner, wanted on war crimes charges

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Move to deny Moscow’s children’s commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova a platform comes as she tells parents to write to her ‘to find’ their missing children

Britain has blocked the UN webcast of an informal security council meeting on Ukraine on Wednesday at which Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights – wanted by the international criminal court on war crimes charges – is due to speak.

The meeting this week will focus on “evacuating children from conflict zone” and Russia said on Tuesday that commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova would feature virtually. Such meetings are not held in the security council chamber and all 15 council members have to agree to allow it to be webcast by the United Nations.

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US

Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.

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French priest gets death threats after ‘sexy’ pole dance show held in his church

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Baroque music and performing arts group performed Pergolesi’s lyrical sequence Stabat Mater combined with pole and dance acts

A French priest has received death threats after a sold-out pole dance performance that the local paper called “sexy” was held in his church.

Daniel Boessenbacher, the priest at the Protestant Saint-Guillaume church in Strasbourg, eastern France, told AFP he had alerted police to the threats after receiving two anonymous letters.

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Furious Credit Suisse investors say bank’s board should be ‘put behind bars’

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Shareholders lash out during final AGM as boss apologises for crisis that led to takeover of lender by UBS

Furious Credit Suisse investors at its final ever annual meeting blocked executive pay plans and called for board members to be “put behind bars”, as the Swiss lender’s chair said he was “truly sorry” over the bank’s demise.

Shareholders used most of the nearly five-hour annual general meeting in Zurich – the last in the 167-year-old bank’s history – to voice fury over poor management, hitting out at excessive pay for “incompetent and greedy” bankers who they said took too many risks and endangered Switzerland’s economic prosperity.

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